


RAGE QUIT

by MorbidOptimist



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, super mario maker, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2018-08-16 03:30:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8084998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorbidOptimist/pseuds/MorbidOptimist
Summary: Roxy was good at games, especially the Nintendos, but a recent trend in losing obscenely difficult super Mario Maker challenges created by her cousin has given her a loud mouth and her sister a bad habit.





	1. Chapter 1

Roxy didn’t notice it at first. 

To be completely honest with herself, she was incredibly surprised to have noticed it all; and she wouldn’t have, if not for her last ditch effort to win the level by muting the game music to see if it would help. She had left her headphones around her ears out of habit. 

Twenty tries in, and strings of mangled syntaxed curses trailing her wasted efforts, she had taken a deep breath and tried again.

In that pause, she heard something, from the general direction of the bunkbeds behind her. 

At first, she assumed Rose was just reacting to whatever was in the book she was reading; Rose always read when she was watching her game. 

A few lives lost later, and a few more profanities shouted, Roxy heard an unmistakable moan. 

It wouldn’t have been the first time Rose had been reading some form of erotica to be sure, but Roxy certainly never recalled Rose getting herself off to it with her in the room. 

They were close of course, but they had a few boundaries, and Roxy had believed masturbation to be among them.  

She blushed, but tried to carry on normally; the last thing she wanted to do was call attention to it and accidentally traumatize her sister for life somehow because of it. Rose chose odd things to get fixated on, if her strangled relationship with their mother was anything to go by. 

Roxy focused on the game, trying her best to get Mario through the utterly hellish levels Dirk had constructed for him.  

Rose was quiet, or at least, quiet enough that Roxy couldn’t hear her, so she relaxed as much as the game let her until another death made her swear which prompted another noise from Rose.

Roxy bit her tongue -a habit she exhibited when she was frustrated- and she wondered just why Rose would choose now out of all times to get her freak on. 

She thought about it during her next try, completing the first few segments of the level by muscle memory alone; she and Rose spent a lot of time together, they were best friends after all, and it certainly wasn’t unusual for one of them to go inquire after the other, should one of them decide to bug off on their own for too long. 

Now that she was thinking about it, it made perfect sense. 

Normally, when she was gaming, she was so utterly focused on the game, she was completely oblivious to the world around her; the blaring music that normally assaulted her ears would easily drown out anything Rose would be doing, and because Rose was always reading on her bunk behind her while she was playing, she would free to do whatever she wanted wanted without having to fear that she would get interrupted.

It was actually pretty clever, Roxy mused.

Her amusement was quickly torn apart when her walljump fell a bit short and landed Mario face first into a giant saw blade of an immediate, unforgiving, and gruesome death.  

She screeched. 

Rose  _ moaned _ .

Roxy held her breath as Mario respawned, once more, at he beginning of the entire level; Dirk didn’t believe in save points, the bastard. 

Curious, Roxy decided to test something; she was a scientist after all. 

She ran the level to the best of her abilities silently. 

Rose was silent behind her. 

She tried the course again, this time, throwing curses and frustrated hollars at the screen in front of her like she usually did; when she finally died, Rose groaned, deeply. 

She repeated the experiment, completely disregarding her former goal of actually completing the level. She alternated runs of silence and screams, until she was certain of the findings. 

Her conclusion was that from what she could tell, Rose only made noise when she did; she supposed that her sister was trying to mask the sounds of passion under her sounds of rage, too better keep from getting caught.

Roxy frowned, let the controler rest in her lap for a moment, and rubbed her temples. 

Part of her felt a little guilty. A little gross even, for experimenting with her sister’s libido. 

She decided that the fastest way to end the awkward situation she had found herself in, would be to call it a night and stop playing entirely. Maybe throw some Bagelbites into the microwave and let Rose finish getting up to what she was getting up to.

Although, Roxy thought, that would be assuming that Rose would continue once Roxy finished, which, if her reading on the situation was right, would be an inaccurate assessment.

Roxy shifted in her seat, letting Mario die and respawn repeatedly while she thought it over. 

She exhaled sharply, vexed at the kill counter and at her own moral convictions; she had spent several minutes and dead Marios secretly fooling around with her little sister’s self exploration and she figured she owed it to her to let her finish in the very least. 

With her mind made up and her resolve reforged, Roxy rolled her shoulders and tried the level one more time. 

And one more time. 

And one more time after that. 

God she hated Dirk. 

The swearing came naturally, expletives and gibberish slurring together to form half unintelligible phrases; she jumped better when she shouted “fucking  _ jump _ you  _ piece of  _ fuck  _ shit _ ,” proven science there, and in order to get past the lava pits she had to hurl mangled declarations of how stupid the entire level was in between swaths of cusses and scurrilities that would have made her mother break out the bar of soap had the workaholic woman been home to hear them. 

As she got progressively frustrated, to the point of becoming outright furious, Rose’s quiet noises grew into boulder moans and affirmations of pleasure, which broke Roxy’s concentration, which made her lose more and in turn, made her more frustrated and shot more obscenities. 

The hair on the back of Roxy’s neck stood up, making her wonder if she had completely misread Rose’s intentions when she moaned an intensely depraved “ _ yes _ ” after she had screamed something particularly venomous at the game. 

All of her concentration and hand-eye-coordination gone, Roxy was left spouting nothing but ‘fuck yous’ as Mario and her sister tried desperately to get to the end of their respective goals.

Three more deaths down in a new area later, Roxy had just regained enough composure to progress nearly to the finish line when Rose whined a name. 

Surprised beyond measure, she faltered; Mario plummeted to his death just a fraction of step away from the finish line, prompting one more scream of rage from her throat. 

She threw the controller onto the floor and held her face in her hands, still screaming during every other breath. 

Behind her, she could hear Rose breathing heavily, moaning and sighing. 

Rose repeated the name a few times, confirming that the first iteration had not been an accident, and then Roxy heard a final high pitched hitch in her breath, and a final sigh, and then silence. 

When her own breathing righted itself, Roxy slid off her headphones and ran her hands through her hair. She huffed, resigned that it would take another night at least to beat Dirk’s lastest creation, and dared to turn around. 

Rose looked completely innocent on her bunk, book in her lap, and slight quirk of brow as if regarding her latest failure with quiet amusement. 

If Roxy hadn’t heard her, she wouldn’t have been able to tell Rose had been up to anything at all. 

The thought settled strangely in her shoulders; just how many times had Rose got herself off to her gaming forays? Was it any game? Or just the stupidly insane Mario Maker levels Dirk kept sending her? Did her sister had a thing for watching Mario experience death in multitudes of ways? She hoped not; Mario was kinda adorable in a determined protagonist sort of way, but naughty-night dream man, he was not. Even when getting devoured, melted, or blown up. Especially not then. 

Or maybe she was just thinking too hard about it. 

Did Rose actually know she had been listening? Had she planned it as a way to get her goat? Is that why she had called out the name she had?

It wasn’t above her sister at all to find new ways to yank her chain for the hell of it.  

Roxy bit her lip, unable to think of something to say.

She’d been looking, speechless, at her sister for too long now, she realized. 

“You almost had it the last time, if that’s of any consolation,” Rose offered, from her perch on the bottom bunk.

Roxy shook her head; “Yeah, almost,” she agreed, playing off of Rose. 

She wondered how red her face was, and if Rose was mistaking her embarrassment for residual anger, or just as loss from all the lack of winning she had been doing.  

“Are you going to attempt it again tomorrow, or are you going to hack it.”

“And give Dirk the satisfaction? Fuck nah, I’m going to beat it fair and square and rub it in his dumb egotistical face.” 

“He’ll be delighted by your success, I’m sure.” 

“Di Stri totes won’t be the only one, I’m sure.”

“Oh?” Rose replied, smiling. 

Roxy rolled her shoulders and twisted in her seat, stretching; choosing to ignore the bait she accidentally set herself up for; “So Rosey-girl, how was your book?” she asked instead. 

Rose closed the novel, using a ribbon dutifully marking her place in between the pages.

“Enthralling. It was quite immersive, albeit I will be the first to admit that for all the passion, the antagonist left a little something to be desired.”

“Shame,” she replied, standing up. 

She cast a look around, at everywhere but her sister, and decided that she needed a few minutes to herself. 

“I’m going to steal a quick shower, cool off a little; be back in a bit.”

“Have fun,” Rose deadpanned, already returning to her book.  

...

 

In the safety of the shower, Roxy allowed herself to think freely about the situation. She had been willing to become completely honest with Rose, up until the end. She had planned to apologize, explain her reasoning for not mentioning it during the fact, and would choose to omit the part about testing her sister’s volume control. 

The key words in those ideas was “had been”. 

Roxy had no idea what to do now however. 

If it had been any other name, any of the girl’s from her grade or a celebrity, or even a fictional character or absolutely anyone else, Roxy would have had no trouble coming clean.

But the name Rose had used had been hers, and she had no idea how to handle that very important piece of information.  

If she mentioned it, there would be no way that it wouldn’t change their relationship forever. 

She couldn’t think of a way that it could be brought about without damaging their relationship beyond repair and she outright refused to let that happen.

She would think on it, she decided, as she finished her shower; she would think on it, and say nothing until she knew how she felt about the situation.


	2. Chapter 2

Roxy wasn’t in a hurry to try Mario Maker again, or any other rage inducing game for that matter, so Roxy decided to spend a few days on more  _ forgiving _ games; the first night she spent on Rose’s bunk playing Animal Crossing, with Rose knitting beside her. She counted the complete lack of anything resembling masturbation a success, even if she had to withstand Rose’s amused smirks and witty remarks about her latest Mario break-up.

After about a few hours whittling away at her virtual bell based debt, Roxy forwent playing the game to converse the pros and cons of its different game mechanics with Rose, until her sibling grew bored with the circular discussions and suggested a movie instead. 

Rose’s poison of choice was “Videodrome,” but Roxy was easily able to overturn her decision towards something a bit more tame by offering to make them both popcorn; Roxy knew her sister “Lilo and Stitch” just as much as she did. 

They huddled up on the floor, with blankets and pillows scattered about; around Lilo’s purchase of Stitch, Roxy nestled her head in her sister’s lap. She made it halfway through Nani’s lullaby before nodding off completely. 

She woke up on the floor, next to Rose, under a pile of blankets, having to pee.

Rose had not been happy when she had accidentally tripped over her on her stumbling dash out of the room.

Their Mom had been home for a few hours after that, and Roxy had spent the day catching up with her. Mom had helped her with her newest thesis paper in the kitchen, while Rose had played her violin in the living room, ignoring them. Shortly after that her pager summoned her away once again, and Rose had bombarded her with half hearted looks of betrayal.  

Later that night, Roxy resigned herself to playing Pikmin; a text from Jane had left her in a rather sour mood, and the tiny little aliens never failed to cheer her up. 

Rose quirked an eyebrow, but refrained from commenting; her sister had been around long enough to know that when she popped in a Pikmin installment, it was not something to be made fun of, and Roxy was grateful for that. 

She played well into the night, far after Rose had already fallen asleep, with only the faint glow of the screen illuminating her face. 

When she finally quit, Roxy let the game’s menu music run for awhile, and glanced over Rose’s face. 

She watched Rose’s face slowly illuminate from the light of the gentle dawn. 

By the time the sun finished its ascent, and light streamed in through their thin rectangular window, Roxy had climbed up to her own bunk, and huddled underneath the covers, where she stayed well into the early afternoon.

By the third day, Roxy noticed a slight shift in Rose’s behavior, prompting Roxy to test out a new theory.

After a two more days, Roxy was certain of her findings. 

Rose was getting antsy and irritable; she was growing restless from what Roxy presumed to be a  lack of,  _ self love _ , as a result of the fact that she hadn’t touched a rage inducing game in nearly a week.

Roxy hoped her sister would find a way to take care of the problem herself, but as the week wore on and Rose grew more and more hostile, Roxy realized she was caught between a rock and a hard place.    

The last thing she wanted to do was fight with Rose; which was an event that was increasingly approaching inevitability at an alarming rate. 

Rose had already begun dropping one liners coated in thin layers of venom; and, as any Lalonde knew, there was a grave difference between sarcasm and passive aggression.  

She decided to bite the bullet. 

Dirk had sent her several messages offering condolences for having finally created a level that stumped her, and there was no way that she could let that stand; with that and the continued well mannered relationship she had with her sister also riding on her shoulders, Roxy steeled herself up and promised herself that she would not stop until she had either beaten the level, or fixed Rose’s itch, whichever came first.

_ Pun intended _ , she giggled internally.  


	3. Chapter 3

She made a show of choosing which game to put on; or rather, she spent several minutes picking up games and shoving them back again while Rose sat at their desk, typing away to the red text filling her screen. 

Roxy huffed; both at her reluctance to begin the game again, and at the anxious little thought worming its way into her belly that she might not be able to fix their situation if Rose remained more focused on Dave than on her.

Annoyed at herself now, she licked her teeth and decided to get on with it; she had a thing to prove to Dirk and if Rose did or didn’t take advantage of the situation, that was going to be on her own shoulders, she decided.  

Mind steeled, she booted up the deceivingly innocent cartoonish hellscape that was Mario Maker, took a deep breath, and loaded back into Dirk’s level. 

The first death was instantaneous and Roxy suddenly remembered why she hated the level in a deep seated loathing with the density of one thousand suns. 

She grimaced and willed her fingers to work on pure muscle memory while counting through different timers and routes in her head; there were several ways she could go about solving the level, but only one of them was correct and she had only hunches as to which ones where the right choices or not.

The game was also made marginally harder than it should have been by the fact that she was choosing to again play without the sound blaring through her headphones; even though most of her attention was glued to the screen, some small part of her was unable to disconnect from the nearly phosphorescent feeling that she needed to keep track of her sister as well. 

Thus, Roxy noticed quite quickly when Rose’s taps and button patters slowed drastically, and Roxy’s spare lives had already dwindled to less to half when she audibly tracked Rose’s movements to her bunk. 

There was a few minutes of silence from her, and then Roxy heard the click of her sister’s laptop opening once more.    

She started typing once again, but the key hitting was in a vastly different pace than what she had been using against their younger cousin. 

Inwardly Roxy smiled; if their mother was married to science, then Rose was married to fanfiction, and during the next few death prompted restarts, Roxy was filled with a small sense of calm. 

It soon petered out however, when Roxy found the right path. The right timings. The right reactions. 

Immediately she was pleading at the screen, quietly, Rose nearly all but forgotten as she whispered nothing but pleases and yeses under her breath. 

Rose stopped typing and Roxy had no doubt as to what new task her fingers were busying themselves with, but Roxy found herself simply too overjoyed to care. 

Finally, sweet sweet victory was in her sight, with the final door just out of reach... 

She directed Mario past the final obstacle and into the door the would drop her over the final platform just a jump away from victory-

-and found herself being dropped into lava right next to the very beginning. It was only by the sheer vice grip she was choking the controller with that kept the device from being hurled into the television set and the wall behind it. Her headphones slid down around her neck and the level faded back into the beginning where Mario became trapped in a repeating death loop from Roxy’s lack of input. 

She screamed.

Nothing but righteous fury spilled from between her lips, and the words fell with such volume that she knew she’d be completely unable to speak the next day, but she didn’t care.

She didn’t care about the stupid game or Dirk’s stupid ego, or Rose’s stupid crush, or her stupid feelings about any of those stupid things.

She was far beyond rational feelings or thoughts and as her volume crescendoed and wailed in pitch, tears stream from her eyes, her fists clenched, and foot stomped the floor as if she were an irate toddler. 

Several minutes passed.

When she was out of breath, she closed her eyes and remained motionless, her head tilted up at the ceiling fan. 

She exhaled.

Slid her headphones back into place, and sat down. 

She mumbled a promise under her breath; an oath of victory before death, and let Mario die once more to restart the level. 

Her body felt like it was on edge and Roxy was certain she was feeling a little of her soul die with each new attempt’s failure. 

Two hours later, after she had determined two out of all possible routes to be irrefutably incorrect, she heard Rose start to stir in the bed behind her. In her soulless state, Roxy found herself mumbling a few particularly venomous curses at the screen for her benefit. 

Roxy was nearly running the level on auto pilot, playing it as if disjointed from the game entirely and from her body, and even partially from reality. In her disillusioned state of being, Roxy found her sister’s reactions more pleasant to orientate around than the game’s, and toyed with what kind of words she let fly at the screen. 

Idly, she discovered Rose hummed quietly at anything dirty she spat at the level on the screen, but  _ moaned _ softly whenever she insulted it. 

Curious as to what would happen if she made the insults more vague and open ended, Roxy hunched in on herself a bit, and lowered her voice, and snarled a tailored insult dripping with disdain tangle into the air like a coiling serpent. 

She heard Rose’s breathing hitch, and she offered another in response. 

A strange sort of sense of pride overcame her; Roxy felt her face catch in a contorted smile, and her brows furrowed as more and more vulgarities dislodged themselves from her game fractured soul, each more sexually aggressive than the last.

Rose grew steadily louder, and Roxy could occasionally hear the sounds of her hand moving though her slickness, and when Roxy was practically hissing her insults, Rose’s moans had evolved into full guttural groans that Roxy regarded with the abstract satisfaction a game designer would feel upon watching their player audience break down in tears after losing for the nigh uncountable time. 

God, there were days she hated Dirk.  

The thought of him sitting there smugly, not even reading the statistics over his level for already knowing how complicated and difficult to beat his game already was, awoke a tiny dark place within her that both she and Rose had inherited from their mother.   

“I hate you,” she spoke tonelessly at the screen. 

Rose came, if the sounds Roxy heard from behind her were any indication, and almost instantly, the haze of rage cleared from her mind, body, and soul, and Roxy was left with the dawning realization that her little sister had gotten off to the idea that she  _ hated  _ her. 

Her gut squirmed and throat tightened; her sister’s actions were now being illuminated in a new light and what she saw she found heartbreaking. 

Well, she cautioned herself as she exited the game, they had the potential to be heartbreaking; as she rolled up the controller cable, she reasoned that Rose might just be into Weird Shit ™ .  

But, she thought, as she opened the glass cabinet to put the controller back, there was a high probability that Rose had a crush on her and was riding on waves of guilt and self hatred. 

She found herself unable to process the thoughtfully; there was still too much residual gaming rage lingering in her system, leaving her in a semi emotional rollarcoasterish state to think too much. 

Her first instinct was to flop face first onto Rose’s bed and wail; in the past Rose would regard such actions in a fond manner. She’d made a clever quip that was both teasing and reassuring, and then pet her hair when Roxy moved her head into her lap. Usually at which point, she’d wrap her arms around her sister’s middle and startle her with a raspberry to the tummy. Which of course, would either lead to a pillow to her head and a dismissal from her bunk, or a good ol’fashioned tickle fight.

She wondered, if she were to lay her head in her sister’s lap now, if the lingering scent of Rose’s transgressions would still be lingering on her skin. If she curled up to sleep beside her, if later Rose’s fingers would ghost along her skin or if it would dart between her own legs again. 

And she wondered how many times that her sister’s skin  _ had _ held the scent of sex without her realizing it.  

Was the comforting scent she grown so used to Rose’s arousal? 

Sex and Lavender. 

Sex and Book Dust...

Sex and Cat Fur;  Sex and Secrets... 

Sex and Comfort?

Sex and Sisterhood.

Had there been times she had quit before Rose had finished, and she had buried her face in Rose’s still wanting flesh; had Rose ever battled against herself, on whether she should remain ever so perfectly poised and lost in heat, or to move  _ just enough _ to get well needed relief? 

Had she ever cried herself to sleep over her?

Over the things she’d done?

The things she’d thought?

Rose’s final groan kept repeating in her mind with the steady rhythm of her own spoken “I hate you” playing underneath. 

Roxy tapped her fingers against entertainment center cabinet; she wanted nothing more than to curl up with Rose and talk away her troubles as she had a million times before; but with her current problem consisting of Rose, Roxy was at a loss. Even though she was arguably far closer to Rose now if only tangentially, it felt to her as if there was a canyon wide divide between them now and Roxy had no idea how she was supposed to cross it. 

Finally, her bleeding heart won out. 

She slipped her headphones off and turned to her sister’s bunk.

Rose was fast asleep; or else playing at being so, and Roxy felt her heart sink. 

She sighed and killed the lights and switched the television’s input; a late night talk show flickered on dimly and Roxy found herself too unbothered to change it. 

She walked to Rose’s nightstand, to hoist herself up using it as leverage as she normally did, but stopped short. 

She watched her sister breathe for a few moments, the shapes of her face and hair beyond familiar to her.

Fondness filled her fingertips, and Roxy brushed them gently across Rose’s face to clear it of the errant blonde strands of her hair.

They lingered, and Roxy let them brush delicately against Rose’s cheek. 

“I love you Rose-y,” she whispered into the darkness.

Carefully, slowly, she leaned over and pressed a kiss to Rose’s temple, and then let her own glide down to rest where her fingertips had been only moments before. 

She breathed in Rose’s scent, and for the life of her, Roxy could only identify it as the scent of being  _ home _ .  


	4. Chapter 4

As Roxy pressed her knuckles to her brow, she wondered not for the first time, if she perhaps shared too many similarities of her mother and forced herself to close the cabinet. Addiction was a terrible thing, and she didn’t want to jump off the wagon and nosedive back into troubled waters just yet. 

Well, she did, sort of; but she took a deep breath and left her kool-aid unspiked. 

She left the cup on the counter for a second to run her hand through her hair. 

The stress was starting to get to her; honestly, she was probably making a mountain out of a hairball and it wasn’t like it was her cat to clean up after in the first place. 

She swore under her breath; she thought back to that traumatic, terrible day, where she had accidentally ushered dear, poor sweet Jasper to his death.

Rose had understood that it was an accident, but the year of silence and deadpanned expressions had been unbearable. 

She watched one of the cats bat at her kool-aid and cupped her hand around the glass to keep the six-legged beast from knocking it over. 

She smiled halfheartedly at it, not able to recall which feline it was, other than figuring it had been from one of her later cloning attempts at cloning for the overall stability of its features. 

She scratched its cheek and exhaled a small, relieved breath, that she had eventually been able to put a stop to their family’s turmoil by successfully cloning Jasper, and that Rose had accepted him. 

She only wished that another Jasper II could solve her sister’s current problem so easily. 

She took a sip from her drink.

She had been surveying the situation for a few months now, scientifically inclined as she was; gathering variables and dubious ‘evidence’ to draw conclusion from. 

Yet she still didn’t feel convinced. 

Something in her refused to believe her findings; something in her refused to take further action unless she heard the words from Rose herself and she refused to talk to Rose about it unless she was absolutely certain, thus she was trapped in a void of self-perpetuated limbo. 

As she watched the cat, who blinked its three eyes slowly at her, she drew in a sharp inhalation and decided that she was tired of avoiding her sister and tiptoeing around the problem. 

She was going to do what any concerned party in her predicament would do.

Roxy downed the rest of her drink and wandered into the living room, past her mom vacuuming the floor and several more mutant cats, up the stairs and into her shared bedroom.

Rose was typing away at her computer when she walked in, and looked up when she stepped through the door. 

“Gonna work some a bit,” she stated evenly; “Gonna see if I can crack some more stuff down before Mom wakes up and asks to do the heavy lifting.”

Rose scoffed under her breath, ever put off by the mention of their quasi-negligent guardian and returned to her typing.

Roxy kept her composure and grabbed her own laptop from her bunk, the book beside it, and a handful of papers scattered underneath before dropping back down. 

She smiled at her sister as she left the room and kept herself composed until she reached the observatory, where she exhaled deeply. 

She wandered to the back of the room and dropped the book and loose-leaf unceremoniously before sitting down and settling her trusty hardware on her lap and flipped it open. 

Roxy steeled herself up as she booted up her system and ran her tongue over her lips. 

She had hacked many things in her life; Betty Crocker’s facebook, Skianet’s databanks, her highschool’s homepage…

As a point of solidarity, she supposed, she had never hacked any of her friends, let alone her sister’s accounts. 

Well, except once on her Neopets to give her and her friend Jade a fun surprise that one summer; but she’d left hints about it first, as much as yelling ‘surprise!’ and waiting for Rose to see what she’d done could count as hinting.  

As she selected her programs and algorithms, she bit her lip. 

She was breaching Rose’s privacy, and she would freak on her if she ever found out, but Roxy didn’t see any other alternative. 

She’d built Rose’s computer over top to bottom a few times, and she had installed a few features on it for safety in the name of recovering her sister’s work should her machine get lost or stolen.

Creeping into her files was easy.

At first glance, everything was normal; her volumes long .txt files filed wizard slash and cat poems, folders of eldritch inspired artworks, folders of funny cat pics, folders upon folders of knitting patterns, and a folder of  _ very  _ nicely dressed grim-gothic women. 

Roxy couldn’t find anything that resembled a diary, but she knew her sister well enough to know that Rose would reference her thoughts and self-immolation  _ somewhere _ , so she kept looking. 

On a whim, she decided to check Rose’s chat history; if Rose had spilled any hints to her mental or emotional state, she was sure, it would have to have been to their cousin Dave.

Well, her cousin that was, Rose’s brother, she amended; the adoptive genealogy in their family was a little complicated.

She shook the thought from her head and opened one of Rose’s messages from nearly a month prior. 

It was long and brimming with purple prose and red run-on sentences which she expected but something seemed… off. 

Looking through the log a bit closer, Roxy noticed something extremely odd. 

The conversation flowed like Rose had been speaking with Dave, but Dave didn’t…  _ sound  _ like Dave. 

In fact, Dave sounded an awful lot like Dirk. 

As she scrolled through one of the chats, her gut began to sink.

‘Dave’ sounded suspiciously similar to Dirk’s Auto-Responder. 

It was subtle; not something she could particularly point to any specific thing he said and call him for it, but it was there in his underlying tones and sarcastic self-rebuttals. 

She’d tango’ed on the wrong end of Dirk’s AI before, back when he had been pushing her and the rest of his friends away those dark summers ago, and she was dead certain that Dirk’s Auto-Responder must have taken up impersonating Dave once Dirk had forbidden him from interacting with Jake, herself, and Jane. 

She put the revelation aside for a moment, to focus on Rose. 

Surely Rose must’ve called the program’s bluff? 

She couldn’t see any-

There. 

It wasn’t Rose balking at ‘Dave’s’ odd textual behavior, but it was the confirmation that she had originally been looking for; a long, spiraling wall of text depicting Rose’s inner lament over her infatuation with her. 

It was sweet, in a way. If it had been on a card maybe, or written in one of Rose’s novels between characters, Roxy would’ve breathed easy and congratulated her on her clever word plays and stirring imagery. 

And well, she wasn’t going to lie to herself; she liked getting compliments a bit more than any girl probably should, so she appreciated those as they were. 

Honestly, with how rampant her mind had been turning this situation over, seeing the proof of reflection on her sister’s thoughts was almost a welcome relief and nearly trivial in composition.   

So her sis had a teeny little crush on her; so what?  With the estranged nature of her relationship with their mom, Rose was probably just projecting onto her ‘cause she was the only girl really there for her at the moment. Another year or two and the feeling would probably fade, Roxy mused. 

She continued to scroll down Rose’s text; just to have a better idea of how she’d like to talk to her sister about it and to just sort of get preemptively ok over it. 

It was all well and good until Rose’s words stopped and Hal’s words started.

Roxy frowned. 

While it looked like surface level Dave, replying with surface well-meaning replies, Roxy read the thinly veiled insults and gaslighting as clear as a wizard hat on a glass table. 

It left her stomach feeling sick, the way he twisted Rose around to self-deprecation and suicidal ideation.

She checked the next chat log.

And the next.

And one from several weeks before.

And then two from a year before that, each with more horror than the last.

She dug a little a pulled up their ‘first’ chat, dated back when Rose was just about to enter middle school. 

She scrolled through it and checked the next few. 

It had taken Rose only a single conversation to call Hal out on his not being the ‘real’ Dave, but she’d just taken it for a poorly constructed prank, it seemed. Roxy couldn't tell if Rose figured Hal was actually Dave after that, or just played along, but either way, Roxy didn't like it.

Their conversations were lighthearted and filled with the general goofs she’d expect from 11 year old Rose. 

She skipped ahead a few logs and found what looked to be Rose’s beginning descent; just two minor word choices, that could have meant anything really, but felt out of place until paired with Roxy’s understanding.  

It was a log from nearly a year later, that Rose seemed to have confessed everything, as she and Hal were chatting it up as if it were a normal thing for them to discuss. 

And the Ai was casually joking that her sister should save her family the horror and knit herself a noose. 

She closed the lid with a quiet click. 

She breathed for a moment. 

And then one moment more.

Silently. 

There were no words, in the entirety of the English language or in the scientific one that Roxy knew of, that could describe the feelings of absolute rage that were burning through her veins.

_ How dare he. _

Everyone knew of Rose’s vulnerable volatile state of sensibilities; there was no way the sorry excuse of ad ad-blocker could not have known what kind of effect his ‘helping’ would have on her sister.

She hurriedly ran through her memories, plucking out the instances of Rose’s worst periods, wondering if the AI had anything to do with them or not. 

She shuddered.

There’d be no way to tell unless she scanned every chat her sister had made with the program and correlated the data and she didn’t have time for that.

She hissed a short breath; Hal had probably already noticed her snooping. 

If she didn’t act first, there’d be no telling what he’d fill her sister’s head with.   

With her mind made up and her knuckles ready to bruise, Roxy marched down the spiraling staircase, aimed to the ready for a mental game of war.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Rose looked up, started to see her venture back into their room so quickly; usually when she worked, she was gone for hours at a time.

“Forget something?” she asked, her brows raised at the intrusion, her back pressing against her chair in almost a confused manner. 

At seeing her no doubt still livid expression, Rose’s hand sought her armrests cautiously. 

“I need to borrow your computer real quick,” Roxy stated flatly, in a tone that left any room for argument in a no man’s land of trecherous ground. 

Rose’s brows knit slightly, but it wasn’t the first time Roxy had requested use of it for one reason or another, so Rose seemed comfortable enough when she acquiesced and relinquished the mechanical beast with a nod of consent. 

Roxy gestured for her to get up, and wasted no time in sliding into her seat and setting to work. 

“Alright, where are you, you little virus,” Roxy hissed, scanning through Rose’s contact list. 

“Something wrong, sister dearest?” Rose asked, still audibly at a loss. 

“I’ll say there fuckin’ is,” Roxy grumbled harshly as she pulled out her phone. 

She set a quick text to Dave, the real one, asking him to ignore anything that might pop up on his chum feed for a few minutes and cracked her knuckles as she opened “Dave’s” chat. 

At seeing Rose’s last conversation with Hal, her stomach started to turn and she grit her teeth.

“Roxy,” Rose nearly yelped; “What are you-”

“Alright, listen here you good for nothing sorry excuse for an answering machine,” Roxy hissed as she started typing; “I don’t care how clever you think you are, I’m going to rip your coding out line by line and stuff you into a Facebook App, so help me Skaia-”

“Roxy,” Rose shouted again, grabbing her shoulder; “What the fuck-”

Roxy spun in her seat and pulled Rose’s arm until her sister was nearly eye level with her; Rose gasped and her expression tore between being startled and being upset.

“Hal’s been playing you,” Roxy growled; “and I’m not gonna let him get away with it.”

“What- Roxy stop!” Rose shouted, jerking Roxy’s arm away from the laptop. 

Rose tried to pull her away from the desk, but Roxy was planted firmly, and she continued her scathing rant to the virtual boy, living tides of curses and threats against him in rapid succession.

Rose caught sight of what she was typing and pulled back, with a horrified inhalation of breath. 

“Roxy, what the  _ fuck _ ? Why-” she fumbled. 

“Stop!” she shouted, and then she shouted it once more when Roxy failed to react accordingly. 

“You can’t talk to him like that-”

“The hell I  _ can’t _ ,” Roxy answered, drawling the word with harsh a vowel. 

“He’s been filling your head with lies and making you think things you shouldn’t-”

Rose took an off-kilter step back before lunging to her laptop to slam it closed, nearly crushing Roxy’s fingers in the process.

Roxy jerked back to see Rose’s pained expression. 

She looked at her quietly, and Rose pulled her laptop to her chest and both of them fought to catch their breath.

Rose was shaking. 

“You looked through my chats,” she said flatly, her stare piercing. 

“Yeah.”

Rose’s face crumpled in a mix of emotion; as Roxy stood to walk near her, Rose balked and back stepped closer to her bunk. 

“Rose-”

“He didn’t  _ make  _ me think anything,” Rose growled; “You had no fucking right-” 

“I’m not talking about your crush Rose,” Roxy rushed, “I’m talking about how he’s been using it against you. He’s been trying to make you sicker, and I’m not about to let that happen anymore.” 

Rose nearly stumbled as she crept back to the bunks, her breaths nearly pants; she looked torn between an urge to bolt and her innate desire to fight anything she could. 

“You… you knew.”

“Only recently,” Roxy murmured; “I wouldn’t have, ‘cept my headphones blew out one night.” 

Rose’s face paled. 

“Look, it’s cool, it really is. You don’t have to be embarrassed or anything,” Roxy insisted gently, walking towards her again; “I’m not like, freaked out or mad or anything.” 

Rose sat on the edge of her bed, a look of genuine bafflement written across her face. 

When Roxy reached her, she leaned over and placed a hand on her shoulder. 

“I didn’t want to mention it till I was sure; that’s why I poked through your computer. That’s how I saw Hal taking advantage of you. He’s… not intentionally bad, I don’t think, but he’s not good for you. At all. At least not being like he had been;” Roxy rambled, “I’m going to straighten him out. Maybe have some words with Dirk. I’m not sure yet; mostly, I just want him to stay the hell away from you ‘till he’s sorted. You don’t need to be dealing with all his pressuring to hate yourself.”

Rose’s eyes narrowed; she opened her mouth, no doubt to begin counterarguing as was her nature, but Roxy cut her off before she could begin. 

“It 'prolly all sounded fine, and he might mean a lot to you but please believe me Rose, that you’re better off without him. He did the same thing to Dirk when he thought he was crushin’ on me, and then when he found about Dirk’s crush on Jake, he kept trying to make Di-Stri break-up with him a whole bunch. He was kinda an ass.”

“And when I got that crush on Jane?” Roxy quipped, “Hoo-boy, Hal had a virtual  _ field  _ day on her, making Jane-y think she was a die hard straight and narrow who secretly resented me.” 

Rose’s anger laced expression faltered; her brows knit again and she seemed to be tonguing her teeth. 

“Why would he do all that? He just want’s to help.”

“Help himself maybe, sure;” Roxy shrugged before continuing, “He doesn’t like love. Or relationships. It weirds him out because he has feelings and he doesn't want to admit to himself that he’s more human than machine. So he takes it out on everyone around him.”   

Rose frowned and looked at the computer resting in her lap. 

“He said… that you’d hate me, if you found out. That’d I ruin the family.”

Roxy fought back a snarl and forced herself to smile. 

“Rose-y, our family has survived way weirder and morally dubious things than a crush,” she boasted warmly; “Besides, I’m your sister and I promised to be there for you after I got sobered up. Well, I’m still sober and I’m still here.”

Rose leaned over slightly, and breathed deeply. 

“Rose?”

“I… I don’t know what to say. I feel like I should be saying something,” Rose grumbled; “All I want to do is dig under the floorboards and fling myself into the river.” 

“Yeah please don’t do that,” Roxy requested drly; “That wouldn’t end well for any of us and Mom would just go all out making a monument that outdid the one she commissioned for our cat.” 

Rose scowled and sat back; she took another deep breath and hesitantly slid the computer from her lap. 

“I knew he wasn’t… the normal Dave,” she murmured after a moment. 

“But I thought it was some sort of altering personality that he had been unaware of.”

Roxy frowned and withdrew her hand with a sigh. Slowly, she took a seat on the bed next to Rose. 

“He… I knew some of the things he said to me hurt but, I thought I deserved them. I want him to say them, I wanted them to hurt…” she mumbled; “He was my best friend.”

“And what was I? Chopped tuna?” Roxy prodded, giving Rose a light nudge with her elbow.

“How could I talk to you about it?” Rose spat; “Was I supposed to just walk up and fall to my knees, relay to you my innermost depraved romantic notions and scare you back into the bottle?” 

“Is.. is that why you started to drink, last year?” Roxy asked quietly. 

Rose broke her gaze and looked back to her lap.

Roxy exhaled a shuddering breath and wet her lips as the thought sank in. 

“Oh Rose…” she murmured. 

Rose’s shaking started to get worse, and an odd hiccup of breath caught Roxy’s attention; Rose was crying under her breath, head in her hands. 

Roxy leaned against her and pulled Rose into her arms; gently, she rubbed small circles into Rose’s arm and softly ran her fingers along Rose’s cheeks, her head pressing into the back of Rose’s neck. 

As Rose’s crying started to grow worse, Roxy rocked her gently and held her tighter. 

“I’m sorry,” Rose whispered, after her sobs subsided and her gasping breaths and twitching hitches had melted into quiet huffs. 

“Me too,” Roxy murmured; Roxy pulled back, causing Rose to shiver.

Slowly, she tugged Rose’s arm and coaxed Rose to look at her. 

“Hey, it’s-”

“Could you go somewhere else for awhile?” Rose asked, cutting her off; “I just… need to be alone for a bit.” 

“Yeah, sure,” Roxy assented awkwardly as she lifted herself from the bed; “Let me have your computer though, I don’t want Hal to make you feel-”

“No, I’m going to talk to Dave, the real Dave,” Rose stated flatly, pulling the laptop back into her arms; “You can hack Hal or whatever from your own machine, can’t you?”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Roxy agreed.

“I’ll check on you in a couple hours, yeah? Bring you something to eat,” Roxy offered as she rubbed one of her arms. 

Rose didn’t respond, but didn’t look angry, which was something of a relief. 

“Love you Rose-y,” Roxy murmured weakly; she leaned forward, surprising herself and Rose, and pressed a light, quick kiss to her cheek before pulling away. 

As Rose sat stunned, various emotions twitching across her face, Roxy walked to the room’s exit and paused in the doorway to throw a glance over her shoulder.

Rose was still hunched over, and looked like it’d be awhile before she’d be able to compose herself entirely. 

“We’ll be okay,” Roxy insisted gently; she turned back around and closed the door gently behind her.  


	6. Chapter 6

Roxy had spent several hours, tracking Hal across platforms and tearing into him; weeding him out from all the corners he’d dug in his roots into. 

At the same time, she’d run a gauntlet of getting to their friend’s first, outmaneuvering the virtual boy’s manipulative ploys with her own sincerity and quick thinking. 

To say that Dirk had been less than pleased at learning his alter ego had been directly responsible for much of Rose’s warped sense of self, would have been a drastic understatement; while he had always had a somewhat tentative relationship with Rose, he still had a general fondness and deep well of respect for her, which Roxy was thankful for.

So when she had lain into explaining Hal’s exploits of her sister, Dirk had chased his errant program down from the other side and blocked off all of his escape routers one by one until they had him cornered. 

Gridlocked as Hal currently was, there was little else to do but decide his fate.  

Jane, ever sour at Hal’s attempts to manipulate her mind, voted strongly in favor of stuffing him onto a floppy disk and burning it. 

Well, truthfully Jake had suggested the burning part, but Jane had pushed it the hardest. 

Jake had mostly been joking; the AI always made him uneasy and knowing Rose the least, he hadn't really wanted to get involved so Roxy tried not to hold it against him. 

Dirk was ready to up and delete Hal down to the finest fragments and residual data bits; Roxy was less sure. 

As much as she currently hated the AI, he was still her friend. Well, 'friend' was a strong word; he was family, she amended. Family that had been shoved to the side and expected to grow into a decent, functional adult without having had any assistance to get there. 

After some terse arguing, Dirk reluctantly agreed to keep Hal intact. 

He didn’t like the idea of him hanging around the internet however, and Roxy didn’t blame him.

It had taken a few hours to set up, but after some final debate, Dirk was now transferring Hal into a separate, contained area of Dirk’s making.

Roxy wasn’t sure if that meant a flashdrive or one of his fighterbots, but it was good enough for her, for the time being at least.

It was late now, nearly the dead of night. 

Roxy rubbed her eyes and clicked her laptop shut; she’d check in on Dirk later, but now there was nothing she could do for him and she was honestly so fed up with Hal in general that it was probably best to just take a break from it all entirely. 

She stood up and stretched before making her way to the kitchen. 

She pulled out a bag of frozen chicken nuggets from the freezer before pausing slightly; she didn’t know what mood Rose was going to be in, but she felt a little coddling couldn't hurt. 

She grabbed the pizza roll bag as well. 

Roxy arranged the frozen food bites on a plate and shoved them in the microwave. 

As it heated, she poured herself and Rose glasses of sweet tea. 

A cat pawed at her ankles; she pet it for a few minutes until it bolted at the sound of the microwave’s triumphant ding. 

She carried the plate and glasses up to the bedroom and nudged the door open with her foot. 

“Hey Rose-y, you up?”

“Yeah, I’m up,” she answered tiredly.

Roxy peaked her head in; the room was dark, and the only illumination came from Rose’s laptop, which she was laying with on her bed. 

“I brought quasi-nutritional face stuffers,” Roxy sang, striding into the room; she bumped the light switch with her shoulder and ignored Rose’s resulting hiss. 

She made her way over to the bed and waited for Rose to sit up before handing her the plate. 

She set Rose’s drink on the nightstand and held her own between both of her hands to keep them from fidgeting. 

“So uh… how are you holding up?”

Rose’s face soured. 

“I’m sorry about Hal, I really am,” Roxy insisted; “Hopefully, in time, he’ll straighten out and you’ll be able to talk to him as much as you want.” 

Rose’s expression continued to fall flat.

“I miss him, as horrible as he was.”

“I mean, that makes sense, for how close you were;” Roxy offered. 

Rose sighed harshly before looking to her computer screen. 

“I sent some of logs to Dave. Just… to get his thoughts on them.”

“And?”

“He’s spent the whole night flipping his shit over how fucked up everything was, and how worried he is over me, and being upset that I didn’t tell him, the real him, about any of this.”

“Dave’s a good boy,” Roxy said before sipping her drink; “He’ll be good for you to connect with again I think.”  

“My other friends got word of things too, your doing no doubt,” Rose muttered as she watched the notifications continue to pile up on the screen. 

“I wonder if they’d be so concerned, if they knew who exactly I’d been heart-struck over all this time,” she wondered venomously. 

“Go easy on them,” Roxy warned, “they’re your friends and they care about you.”

Rose sighed and looked at the plate in her lap; she popped a pizza roll into her mouth.   

“...May I sit?”

Rose thought it over a tense moment, and nodded. 

Roxy sat next to her and stole a nugget. 

“Should've bought ketchup,” she mused. 

“It’s fine,” Rose commented dully. 

“So.. uh… do you wanna talk about any of it? With me?”

Rose bit into another pizza roll and hissed in a breath to cool her mouth from being burned. 

She lapped up the stringing cheeses and sauce and huffed. 

“I don’t think I’ll ever want to talk about any of it, to be perfectly honest.” 

“But will you anyway?”

Rose shrugged. 

“There’s really not much to say about it.”

“It might be good to say it anyway though,” Roxy insisted. 

Rose glared at her. 

“What do you want me to say? Do you want me to go into vivid detail about my romantic fixations on you?” Rose monotonously growled. 

“I mean, maybe?” Roxy replied, genuinely taken aback. 

“Roxy, I know you’re starved for attention but that doesn’t mean you should indulge my perverse natures for your own amusement.” 

“Who says it’s for my own amusement? What if I genuinely just want to help you, huh? Give you a chance to air out all the things you’ve been holding back for so long?”

“To what end, sister dearest,” Rose spat, “Even if I prostrate myself before you, that doesn’t mean everything will magically get better and we’ll stop being sisters and start being romantically compatible strangers.” 

Roxy exhaled a deep breath a took a drag of her drink, letting Rose fume for a moment as she stuffed a pair of chicken nuggets into her mouth. 

“How about this… Tomorrow, if you’re up for it, I’ll take you out for ice cream, yeah? We can hold hands and catch a movie or something.”

Rose set the pizza roll she had been lifting back onto the plate; she looked at her cautiously. 

“You mean… a date?” she asked hesitantly. 

“Sure,” she replied, shrugging. 

“But… Roxy… We’re sisters.”

“Yeah and? So were like, all the old gods and stuff. Nobody’s gonna know.”

“What about Jane? And Dave? Or I don't know, our  _ Mother _ ?” Rose pressed.

“I mean, we can literally say we’re going on a date, they’d just assume it’d be a sister thing. Which, it would be, just not quite what they’d be imagining.”

“You… you’re literally saying this,” Rose stated, “In front of me, right now.”

“Rose-y, I’m your sister. I love you. I want you to grow up happy and healthy and do all the crazy things you wanna do. And right now, you need me to hold your hand and tell you that everything will be fine,” Roxy murmured; “I can’t promise you that suddenly, something will click tomorrow and I’ll be head over heels for you in the way that you want, but I can take you on a couple dates to see if we do or not. And if we don't, you’ll at least have closure and know that I’ll totes still be there for you in a sisterly fashion.” 

“...And if we do? Click?” Rose asked quietly. 

“Then neither of us have to be heartbroken and lonely all the time, I guess,” Roxy replied, thumping her glass; “We’ll cross that bridge and the particulars after that, for our friends and Mom ‘n stuff.”

Rose watched her for a moment, studying her face before the corners of her mouth started to turn slightly. 

“...Can I pick the movie?”

Roxy grinned and pulled Rose into a hug, spilling some of the pizza rolls across their legs; she ruffled her hair, nearly uprooting Rose’s headband, causing her to huff, before pulling back and grinning wildly. 

“Glad that’s settled,” she lilted, leaning back on her hand, the other bringing her drink to her lips.

Rose’s smile grew slightly before a curious expression overtook her face. 

“Hey Roxy…”

“What?” she chirruped, sitting back up.

“You never did beat that last Mario Level.”

Rose waited, her expression a perfectly curated neutral. 

Roxy wet her lips for a moment, suddenly aware of her own heartbeat and the cocktail of feelings flooding her veins. 

As she thought over her answer, Rose’s face began to quiver in anticipation of expected rejection.

Roxy huffed and sat back again, pulling a smirk across her lips.

“After all that fiasco with Dirk’s virtual alter ego? Yeah, he def’ needs his Mario craftin’ skills called into question. I’m gonna win that level so hard, it’ll break a record.”

Rose practically lit up, her excitement and relief radiating from her posture; her eyes were bright and Roxy felt her body fill with affection for the way they looked at her with such regard. 

“Yeah, I’m gonna win that level, and I’m gonna win it even it takes me all night.”

“It’s nearly morning,” Rose mused, as she shifted almost coyly. 

“Guess I better get started then,” Roxy replied, tossing her sister a wink; she stole one of the pizza rolls that had spilled onto the bed before hopping up, splashing some of her tea in the process. 

“I hope you lose a lot,” Rose jested, as Roxy walked over to the consoles. 

Roxy’s smirk widened into a grin; she wiggled her eyebrows at Rose before sitting down to set up the game again.  


End file.
